Gwen Stefani

This week I happened to run across the above video for Gwen Stefani’s 4 in the Morning. I’ve long been an admirer of Gwen Stefani and her band No Doubt, but hadn’t really tuned in to this particular piece until now. It is both Stefani’s and Muller’s masterpiece, at least so far. Muller’s videos can be a bit sickly and baroque. She tends to over do it on gross imagery (see the blood in Garbage’s Bleed Like Me or the rotten fruit in No Doubt’s Don’t Speak), and she tends to inappropriately edit that imagery together with more conventional footage, resulting in often jarring changes in tone. Her videos also tend to be a bit too sparkly for my taste: too many mirrorballs, sequins and glitter. (Much in evidence here.) But 4 in the Morning is almost classical in its purity. No spinning holograms, no sparkles, just one exquisitely photographed sequence after another (though some of the later bits with Stefani rolling around in bed are perhaps just bit too cheesecake). Most of all, we’re allowed the time to take in Stefani’s performance. Though the video has numerous cuts, unlike many music videos, it doesn’t overdo it. Muller’s editing isn’t just random cutting, it is subtly attuned to the music. For a slower section Muller focuses only on Stefani’s face as she sings in a bath tub, during a faster section we have several cuts of Stefani marching out to her limousine. The video is a textbook example of how editing can be used to highlight a great performance, not just distract from a mediocre one.

And what a performance Stefani gives. This is the Gwen Stefani performance to end all Gwen Stefani performances. It is one of the most astonishing things I’ve ever seen on film. Who says musicians can’t rival movie stars in front of the camera? I’d set this up against just about any female performance by anybody ever. Perhaps Stefani’s most evocative features are her eyes, and with each close-up she uses them to full effect. Their movement is precise yet hesitant, subtle yet tentative; each flutter seeming to reveal a new world. Yet, she uses her mouth to almost as good effect: the movement of her slightly pouty lips is so delicate that, brushing up against them, it makes even her teeth seem sublime. But its not just her face: she throws her whole body into the performance. When she stands up against a sunlit window, it is like shivers of girliness are running back and forth from the top of her head to the bottom of her heels and back again.

Now, there are a fair number moments in this video that seem a bit practiced, but some of this stuff you just can’t teach, even to yourself. Some people simply seem to spring out of the abyss as fully formed works of art, completely unconscious of the greatness they bear. I remember one particular girl, a dark-skinned southern Italian, who I used to watch in one of my education classes. I am not ashamed to say that I stared at her for hours. (It was just about all that made the class bearable.) She was, of course, stunningly beautiful, but not any more than one or two of the other girls in the class. Only one word will really do to describe what set her apart: grace. Simply to watch her sit and eat an apple was worth more than all the pornography that ever has or ever will exist on earth. It is strange; such people seem to require no training, and the beauty of their movements is all the more evocative for its complete lack of art. Every movement, every shrug of their shoulder, seems sent to convey some secret message from a higher world. Among writers, perhaps only Katherine Anne Porter ever captured something of this in her story Flowering Judas when she wrote, “No dancer ever danced as beautifully as Laura walked.”

In contrast to most other female pop singers, Stefani basically comes across as a good girl. Though sometimes a bit naughty, she is never trashy. (OK, maybe this crosses the line.) She seems (and I emphasize seems, who knows what is real under the media bubble) to be a sensible, down to earth person, and, for a pop culture icon, surprisingly chaste. No hint of scandal has ever touched her and it is entirely possible she has only been with two men in her whole life (current husband Gavin Rossdale and former boyfriend Tony Kanal, bassist for her band No Doubt). And yet, despite such sexual conservatism, she is incredibly sexy. Stefani seems to have hit the exact level of sexiness a nice man would want in a wife. Unlike a bad boy, who, if he cares to get married at all, might be happy enough with a very conventional wife at home and more exciting partners elsewhere, a nice guy has only got one shot. Like most men, he wants someone exciting in bed. But not too exciting. Hyper-sexiness of the Britney Spears type may have its attractions, but may also indicate a potential for unfaithfulness. Such blatant, overwhelming sexuality is an unsettling force in a marriage, as it tends to spill out into the world at large, and all men would be wise to deeply consider the consequences of marriage to someone possessed of it. Unfortunately for nice guys, someone with a Stefani-like balance is an extraordinarily difficult thing to find. Few women can walk up to such a line without going over, and we often correctly choose to marry a nice but somewhat unexciting woman. That’s usually no more than we deserve, but, ah, wouldn’t it be nice.

Despite occasional flirting with masculine fashion, Stefani has to be just about the girliest singer ever. Just as rich and charismatic male rockers can get away with wearing wearing make-up and assless leather pants, Stefani’s sometimes masculine outfits, from her early sporty look, and the tie and shirt combo seen in 4 in the Morning, really serve only to make her ultra-femininity that much more obvious. Stefani’s look is highly constructed, and highly made up (she does love her make-up), but I doubt if any drag queen could effectively pull her off. Unlike, say, Madonna, whose persona, at least once past her early twenties, always included a heavy dose overbearing masculine will, Gwen is just too girly, especially in her mannerisms, for any mere man to even hope of copying. One wonders if this will last much longer, however. An almost inevitable hint of masculinity seems to enter women as they enter their forties. If Stefani is to continue her career, her songs and her performing style will have to change. You simply can’t be a girl forever. It will be interesting to see if someone whose appeal has rested so heavily on her girlishness can make the transition. One can only wish her better success than Madonna’s unconvincing turn from dominatrix to earth mother. (Could any woman be less down-to-earth than Madonna?) There are hints of a more natural Stefani under the make-up, in her video for Cool (dir. Muller) and at the end of her video for Underneath It All (also dir. Muller, though it starts off unbearably gaudy, the last sequence now looks like a dry run for 4 in the Morning). Heavy make-up will only make her rather thin face look more severe as she gets older. It is to be hoped that she has the good sense not to let herself be turned into a latter-day Joan Crawford.

Girliness isn’t for everyone. Many male critics, in particular, seem to prefer the earlier ska-punk of No Doubt. I remember listening in disbelief as a Toronto DJ went on a rant about Stefani’s song Hollaback Girl. The song, a silly cheerleader chant featuring the immortal refrain: B-A-N-A-N-A-S, isn’t very good, but I was struck by his extreme reaction, going on about “back when she used to have musical integrity.” Since all artists’ output is uneven, and Stefani actually seems to be close to her artistic peak, what he doubtless really meant is that she should have written her bad songs in a more masculine manner. All artists tend to err in particular ways, and female artists tend to err in feminine ways, just as male artists tend to err in male ways. That’s just the way it is. The song does take girly enthusiasm to grotesque levels, but the DJ protested too much. I doubt he was so put out by the metal-machine-music that serves as filler on Nirvana’s studio albums. What seems to upset him so much is that Stefani actually turns out to be a girl with actual girly interests. The ska-punk girl of his dreams, the one who had the same masculine punk rock tastes, was no more. To quote Shaw’s Henry Higgins, “Oh, why can’t a woman be more like a man?”

It is amazing how good Stefani looks at 38. She is as attractive as she ever was, perhaps more so. (Her one flaw used to be a chest flat as a board, something that having a child seems to have corrected.) Doubtless clean living has something to do with this longevity, but having a skinny build probably helps too. (Skinny girls do seem to keep their looks the longest.) Normally, women reach their peak attractiveness from about 18 to 22, but this will vary somewhat from woman to woman. Some women actually seem to peak in their late 20s. A prime example would be Nicole Kidman, who looked rather mousy in earlier movies like Dead Calm, but who, by her appearance in Batman Forever (stinker that it was), was just about the most beautiful woman in the world. Doubtless, part of this is learning how to groom and dress well, but some of it really is natural variance in peak attractiveness. Alas, however, this means that some poor girls reach their peak much earlier than 18, sometimes as early as 13 or 14, well before they can put their looks to any respectable use, such as finding a husband. Even under normal circumstances, many commentators have noted the special glow that girls under 18 have. It is true there is something irrecoverably attractive at that age, and that the last vestiges of it are all but gone by one’s late twenties. However, actresses and performers, who are rarely at their artistic peak before age 28, are fortunate in that peak on-screen attractiveness seems to extend over a much longer period, sometimes well into the late thirties. Bone structure evidently transfers well to the screen, “glow” does not.

Stefani’s current sound owes a lot to eighties influences, but she improves on them. Eighties synth pop was a pretty crude beast. Despite the example of artists like Stevie Wonder, by the early eighties most synth music still sounded pretty tinny and stilted. As U2’s Bono once scornfully noted, “We were the world’s biggest band in a decade full of crap music.” But the greatness of an artist’s influences is often secondary. For the purposes of making new art, the crappy is often just as important as the great. A strong enough artist is often able to see potential in the most unlikely of sources, take the best bits out of it, and turn it into gold. It is not surprising that a girly girl like Stefani would find the somewhat effeminate sound of eighties synth pop more congenial to her artistic purposes than the bombastic male rock of a group like U2, regardless of their relative merits. Influence is all about what you can use.

Then there is Stefani’s unique voice, utterly like anything else you’ve heard. She is fortunate to have grown up in a place where it could be appreciated. America has always been somewhat infertile ground for the high arts. There has never had much room for classical tradition there. Popular art, from Mark Twain to hip-hop, has long ruled the roost. In many ways, this has seriously impoverished the American arts scene: the United States has, for example, produced nothing comparable to a Shakespeare or a Bach. But this fitful rebellion against European art tradition has not been without its compensations. Popular art, with its emphasis on performance and individual expression, has always made more room for individual quirks, and American artists have taken full advantage of that openness. What a wild thing American art is! Can you imagine a voice like Stefani’s in classical music? All praises to the European classical music tradition; it really is the highest form of musical expression. But it is not without its limitations. One of them seems to be its inability to accommodate any great degree of vocal individuality. Though the classical tradition does seem to provide a much larger scope for compositional greatness, it’s often extreme vocal demands mean that only a limited number of vocal types are suitable for interpreting its works. If a music lover were to limit himself to just that one tradition, they would be depriving themselves of the pleasure of such unique talents as Billie Holiday, Astrud Gilberto, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and, of course, Gwen Stefani. I don’t mean to slight the uniqueness and talent of classical performers, but the differences between, say, a Pavarotti and a Domingo, or a Schwarzkopf and a Baker, hardly compare to the vast gulf between the vocal styles of country singers Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash. And that’s just within one genre! The work of classical vocalists is often so subsumed in the composition that, unless you have the CD booklet in hand, one can often hardly tell which is which, but I defy any listener at any moment to mistake Willie Nelson for anyone else whatsoever.

Much has been made of Stefani’s faux feminism, exemplified by her song Just A Girl (dir. Muller):

'Cause I'm just a girl, little 'ol me
Don't let me out of your sight
I'm just a girl, all pretty and petite
So don't let me have any rights

But I am not convinced. If you only read feminist propaganda, you would think that before 1960 the life of a woman was nothing but an unending tale of oppression, drudgery and woe. I for one highly doubt that women’s lives for most of history consisted mostly of unhappiness, at least any more than men’s: it is simply not credible for evolution to have left women without any power of getting what they want. Feminism tends to attract those who are bad at (or excluded from) using traditionally feminine ways of getting what they want: lesbians, the unattractive, the young and inexperienced, and, sometimes, the promiscuous (if a woman can’t control access to her body, she won’t get much respect in return). Since Stefani is neither ugly, promiscuous, nor a lesbian, that leaves young and inexperienced. To be honest, young women’s fear of men is not entirely unjustified: men are big, aggressive creatures who run the world and judge you mercilessly on on things like your looks, and you haven’t learned to deal effectively with them. (Also, men’s commitment to the good and the respectable is sometimes less than wholehearted.) That’s not to defend feminism, but to say that it is not coming out of nowhere. In any event, Just A Girl is a bit of a lark. The tone is light and Stefani’s bratty delivery hardly encourages anyone to take the whole thing too seriously. The ultimate message of the song seems to be that feminism is something silly young girls get a few kicks out of. Its an ideology made to be discarded. Indeed, the main reason feminism has never really caught on among most women is that they are, in the end, actually pretty good at getting what they want without it. Not surprisingly, Stefani’s later albums feature more songs about babies than girl power. Once they learn how to deal with them, young women tend to discover that men aren’t actually that bad. How many young women go around saying “I don’t need a man” at 22 only to end up married and voting Conservative (or Republican) at 30?

Feminism, however, cannot just be reduced to being bad at such traditional feminine means. Feminism, or at least feminism-lite, also attracts at least some lively, talented young women, especially those inclined to enter into traditionally male-dominated fields, which includes many of the most exciting ones. It is not surprising that such women should be impatient of the strictures placed on them, whether by nature or society. Talented human beings, whether male or female, almost always want to, in Nietzsche’s words, vent their strength. To some degree this would seem to apply to Stefani. The music business is in many ways a man's world, and, if you a woman who wants children and a family, negotiating it becomes even more difficult.

Indeed, one of the great themes of Stefani’s work, exemplified by her song Simple Kind of Life (dir. Muller), is the conflict between her art and her desire for a family. This isn’t an exclusively female conflict, I too identify with the desire to settle down with a family, but the artistic life has always put more pressure on women than men. Art makes enormous demands on your time, and every minute making art is one less you have for finding a mate and settling down. Samuel Beckett memorably contrasted the ecstasy of the art life with the felt desire for a more ordinary happiness:

Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back.

Despite Beckett’s high rhetoric, however, such grand renunciations are much less final for a man. He always has much more time to engage in such extravagant poses before changing his mind. An introverted male writer may spend all his younger days writing the Great American Novel, make a great success of publishing it at 40, marry a 25 year old groupie, and father 4 children. A female artist who attempted the same would be at great risk of finding herself irretrievably alone and childless. That biological clock keeps ticking.

There may be something to the idea that women’s artistic achievement has been limited by societal pressure. However, this isn’t necessarily because of any special effort to discourage female artists, but perhaps because women tend to be more easily discouraged. For many female artists, achievement involves overcoming powerful urges in favour of domestic life. These artists doubtless feel torn between the contradictory demands imposed by their own bodies. In such circumstances, it is not surprising that every little bit of social pressure would be interpreted as an attempt to clamp down on their artistic pursuits. But conspiracy mongering is not necessary to explain this phenomenon. It is women’s sensitivity to that pressure, not its particular intensity towards them, that is the real obstacle to female achievement. Male artists, on average, are simply blessed with much less attachment to family life, and thus tend to be less conflicted about single-mindedly pursuing their art. Its just that much easier for them to blow off pressure to settle down. (They are also, it must be said, possessed of a much more forgiving biological clock, should they decide to change their mind later in life.)

LINKS:
I wrote about Shirley Manson, another of my favourite female singers here. I wrote about the efflorescence of female musical artists in the 90s here. I wrote about how women may be underperforming in the arts here. I wrote about how great artists create art out of junk here. I wrote about rock star androgyny here. Muller got her start making videos for the Eurythmics. There are couple good examples here and here. Another of my favourite Muller videos is here. The fast cutting actually fits Sinead O'Connor's fragile, distracted genius extremely well.